News & Events

Over the summer I was thrilled to work as a research assistant for Food Locally Embedded Globally Engaged (FLEdGE). I grew up in a small rural farming community food and food systems were a central part of my life from a young age, so getting the chance to study these systems, specifically infrastructure for Northern Ontario food systems, was a dream come true.

Although I have experience with local food and food systems research, I was a bit out of my comfort zone with the geography of the project, which took place in Northern Ontario. I am very familiar with the opportunities and obstacles that are available for food and farms in Southern Ontario but, at the beginning of the project, food and farming in Northern Ontario was new to me. Before starting the project, I would have said that the food systems in Northern and Southern Ontario have similar challenges and opportunities, however this is not the case. Continue reading “How to Improve Northern Ontario Food Systems: The 4 Next Steps”

Introducing a new blog series by Dr. Theresa Schumilas

The digital revolution is unleashing a lot of creativity and with that, new opportunities. How is this mix of talent, enthusiasm and ingenuity being used to transform unsustainable food systems?

For the past 2 years, I’ve been exploring the ways in which sustainable food movements in Canada are engaging with new digital spaces. I’ve been studying how emerging ‘platform economies’ and social media are opening up new possibilities for linking together and scaling up grassroots food innovation, and giving rise to new forms of on-line activism to transform unsustainable food systems.

I feel like my work has been ‘quiet’. I have:

lurked in dozens of on-line spaces,

smirked at the disruptive clever bits,

been irked by the use of warm fuzzy words like clouds, like, friend, tweet, and sharing, and

jerked into action where the movements for digital sovereignty and food sovereignty meet.

But in all the fun, I have perhaps shirked my responsibility to share what I’ve found.

So for all you tweeters & eaters, and hackers & snackers, this is the beginning of a series of blogs, for your fermentation, about new possibilities for digitally-enabled food system change.

CIRAD, in collaboration with a variety of national and international partner institutions organized an international conference from 22 to 24 January, in Montpellier, France to showcase the importance of territories for achieving the SDGs, both locally and globally, and to set the basis for a shared agenda for research and action.

Doctors attend medical school, electricians go through apprenticeships—but how do farmers learn the practical skills of their trade? There are many different pathways into farming, but they aren’t nearly as structured—nor as well understood—as those of other occupations. In an era of aging and retiring farmers, understanding how the next generation is being trained is important, but there is very little research into it as yet.

Building the Food Movement: Cultivating Connections through Critical Conversations

Bringing together a mix of faculty, students and community-based researchers and practitioners, this webinar series will highlight diverse voices and perspectives that challenge and invite us to think differently about our food system and the paths towards justice and sustainability.

The first webinar is on February 21st, 1-2pm EST on the theme of Agroecology. While the term has become increasingly popular in discussions of food system sustainability, what does it actually mean, and how can we use agroecology principles and practices to transform our food system?

Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, January 31st at 12pm EST. for a free webinar exploring results from research conducted between 2014 and 2017 on sustainable food hubs in Ontario.In this webinar, Katie Nolan (OMAFRA), Kendal Donahue (OMAFRA), Phil Mount (JustFood) and Alison Blay-Palmer (Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems) will discuss the Ontario Food Hub surveys that were conducted as part of an OMAFRA New Directions funded project. Showcasing the infographics created with the information collected, the presenters will highlight lessons learned and future research directions. Following the presentations, there will be time for a Q&A.